Tilos Slam 2010

Slam Poetry emerged in the 1980s as a competitive form of Spoken Word or performance poetry. Marc Kelly Smith is credited to be the originator of Slam Poetry as he was the first one to host slam events at his Get Me High Lounge in Chicago. Soon the initiation was followed by other cities in the US, with the opening of such famous clubs as the Nuyorican Poets Café or the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. Numerous slam projects and movements continuously sprang up since then. Towards the end of the millennium the movie Slam was born, directed by Marc Levin and starring Saul Williams, while the new millennium brought us the Def Poetry shows, produced by Russell Simmons of legendary Def Jam Records and hosted by highly-acclaimed hip-hop artist Mos Def – just to name a few.

The popularity of slam poetry has quickly spread all over the world, and a few years ago it finally reached Hungary as well. Budapest Slam, hosted first in 2006 by Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle, Budapest) is considered to be the pioneering slam event in Hungary, which led to the gradual increase of interest among young poets, rappers and other performers. Since then the actual awareness and enthusiasm regarding this genre is rapidly growing in Hungary and a new scene of slam poetry has clearly begun to take shape, backed by the Slam Poetry Budapest (SPB) crew, and recently joined by the newly formed slam communities of other Hungarian towns such Zalaegerszeg, Veszprém, Pécs and Szeged.

Tilos is a non-profit community radio station in Budapest, regularly organizing various party events around town, among them is Tilos Witchkitchen Series. The concept is to create trend-setting programs based on experimentation and the combination of various genres affecting one another. Last year in April, Tilos Radio held a notable slam contest, the first Tilos Slam, where the winners were: Ponza and IndianA. This time the second Tilos Slam will include a range of international slam performers, taken place at Sirály, Budapest. Thanks to the support of the International Visegrad Fund, young slammers are coming from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. The international line-up will be extended by a Swedish-Spanish-Italian trio, performing the “Smoke & Mirrors” slam show, originated in Berlin at the First European Poetry Slam Days in 2009 by the slammers of the Artists-In-Residence program. The theme of Tilos Slam 2010 will be DiscrimiNATIONS, thus Tilos will proudly join the anti-racist action week connected to the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (March 21). The whole day of March 20 will be declared as a Slam Day on Tilos Radio (in line with the Tilos tradition to have occasional thematic days when the programs of the whole day are dedicated to the given theme), there will be interviews, talks, sound-collage radio mixes and live slam acts on air. In the afternoon Slam Poetry Budapest (SPB) will have a workshop at Sirály, followed by a spoken word lecture held by DJ Sanyi. The Tilos Slam day will honorably be closed by the slam performance of Márk Süveg & Péter Závada (Saiid & Újonc from Akkezdet Phiai), accompanied by musicians. The visuals of the event are provided by 1000% and Kiégő Izzók VJ crew.

2) 4 p.m. Slam Workshop, Lecture
Main theme: development of slam in Eastern and Central Europe, with special regard to the V4 area.
Workshop coordination: Slam Poetry Budapest team
Lecture: DJ Sanyi (Tilos) – „The Medium Is The Mass.Age”
Main languages: Hungarian, English + V4 languages.

3) 8 p.m. Slam Poetry Contest
Theme: DiscrimiNATIONS
Host: Gábor Gyukics (Hungarian poet, translator, slammer)
Winner receives a a complete Tilos gift package with a range of Tilos goodies and a possibility to record a track to be published in June 2010 on the yearly released Tilos Marathon music compilation (a merchandise-CD created for the traditional fund-raising event).

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